Author
Topic: Me?! SELL MY WRITING?!?! (Read 587 times)

As more and more people have been reading Death by Ex-Girlfriend, I've been getting more pushes to go professional with the story, to publish and actually start selling copies. Now, I'm an extremely humble guy, almost to a fault, so I was pretty averse to this idea for a while. Buuut...if there's even a tiny bit of demand for it, why not satisfy the demand?

I've yet to piece together the exact steps I'll take to go through with this, but one of my hopes is to raise enough Freedom Bucks (US Dollars) to hire an artist to illustrate some of it, in comic/manga form. Of course, finding the artists who would be willing to do this would be challenging, but nothing in life is ever easy.

So, for anyone who has read Death by Ex-Girlfriend, I must ask you something. Do you actually believe that any part of the series is worth money? And if so, how much money would you be comfortable spending on it, per book? And I mean comfortable, not maximum, or "stretching it".

Your input is very valuable as I try to decide whether or not I should go for it.

Going Professional is a totally different ballgame than doing it for the "Sake of Doing It." There are certain requirements you have to fulfill, certain legal hoops you have to jump through, and well... certain "Standards" you have to abide by.

That definitely means redrafting your story to fit the format the publishers set for you, which can be a lot of work if you've written quite the amount.

My suggestion: gauge how big your audience size actually is, and weight the pros and cons. Crowdfunding is a nice and affordable way to see just how much people are willing to put for your work and how many people are interested. There are other ways of course, but that's the obvious one to go to in the case of this work.

As for copyright... I'm not one to tell you what you want to do with your work, but I do have one tip: Don't be a Nazi

So in all, decide what kind of work you want your story to be and see who's interested. If you've about decided to put your foot where your mouth is, then by all means, go all the way.

On a side-note, I'm quite surprised your little "side-job" is the one gaining much more attention than the main work you always wanted to spend time on. When you get to it, you can be well assured I'll be following that development

I just read Shield Hero and spotted three grammatical mistakes. Though I enjoyed the story, the sub-par translation cost 9 bucks and I'm okay with it.

It's sort of like getting inspired by ONE's Onepunchman I guess, but that's just the way it is. I'd say go for it. You already have some good art done ofr it from what I see. If you commission more to make the cover pop out then you're in the game.

I'll pledge 12 bucks for two of the first volumes, since I'm on a binge read for Japanese light novels.

Yeah, if I crowdfund it, I'm gonna need to really market the series. Wew laddy. I might end up doing that if I decide to go through with this.

I think that little mishap was due to DbEG being an infinitely easier concept to swallow. Seems a lot of people are waiting for "Harem done right", however one might define that. Maybe a Yandere harem of supernatrual women led by an MC that actually mans up and takes control of the harem is what people want? Who knows, we'll have to see.

I stopped just shy of the beginning of the Phoenix Demon War too I'll get back on it after I finish Senkumo War Stories. I should finally share the rest of the Katya story here too.

@SlamJam

COME ON AND SLAM! What, the nametags attached to dialogue lines? Yeah, it's very script like, but I've seen it done before. I think Re:Zero is written in a very similar format. I'm leaning more towards self-publishing anyway, but we'll see.

@Lego

I'd definitely commission some nice covers. The girls are too good to not do that. Wow, 12 bucks? I was thinking 5 bucks. Anzu may have to go under the knife before I publish that. It's written the way it's written because I had the freedom to just do whatever I like, but I can't publish all of Anzu's filthy lines and quirks with a good conscious. She'd still be a pottymouth, but I'd have to tone it down just a bit.

If we're talking about volumes, I should get it printed, huh? It would be cool to have printed copies indeed.

You'd have to tell me how the printed works end up, because we need us some doujin in MR as a whole - even if you have to pay out of your pocket to have something printed. That's some really useful practical knowledge.

I'm a simple man, I like fun ecchi reads when they're done right, and for the work you did on Anzu you deserve to go pro in one way or the other.

I think your main concern should be getting some good art. If you need some proofreading I'm afraid you'll need to show your work to more objective people to get some good critique, but I'd recommend simply reading light novels you can find, compare the formatting on a very surface level, then go with what works for you.

No matter what nose-in-the-air I'm-a-professional preparedness rituals that people think makes books get read (3 Rewrites, Hiring an Editor, Making a Case Study, Viral Advertising) should be avoided especially if it gets in the way of getting your project off its feet. Unless you have a pro-ear, you've just gotta go pro yourself and learn along the way.

COME ON AND SLAM! What, the nametags attached to dialogue lines? Yeah, it's very script like, but I've seen it done before. I think Re:Zero is written in a very similar format. I'm leaning more towards self-publishing anyway, but we'll see.

In that case, go ahead. I do admit i have a limited reading library. It's mainly journal articles and the occassional book about psychology cases.

Just letting everyone know. Senkumo War Stories will be the very last arc of Death by Ex-Girlfriend. No more side arcs after that.

Spoiler

Thank god, because I'm honestly starting to get sick of this story, but that's just how you know you had a hell of a time with it

Once I finish that, I'll go back and do some fixes and edits on the previous arcs, and see about getting the first couple of volumes printed. Probably going to take me a little while (I'm just one guy writing and sorting through all of this, after all), but it shall happen. I've got some spare cash, so I should see about getting some good cover art too.

Dude if you get physical volumes printed I would buy that, depending on where and how it'd be sold. I have trouble reading and focusing on stuff here but if you got that stuff in a book that'd be cool.

Price wise I'd be willing to go around $12-$20 for a phsyical volume depending on the size. For the sheer amount of effort you put into these stories it would make it well worth the price. Like my God I don't know how you pump 'em out like you do.

You're also way ahead of the game of a lot of mangaka's and light novel authors since you've written the entire series that would be put into print or *cough* someday made into an anime *cough* For real I would love to watch this as an anime series.

I've read over and edited both Aika Crisis and War cloud to the absolute best of my ability Was tiring work, but it's all done. I was going to go ahead and edit Dawn and Dusk too, just so those three arcs are available at the same time. Not sure if I should wait until that one is done too, or just release the first two that are ready and work on Dawn and Dusk while everyone is reading the other ones. Given the events of Dawn and Dusk, and the fact that it's the last arc where the girls are ex-girlfriends and not wives, I wanted the first three together, since they do feel like a trilogy of sorts.